Health and Disease: Year In Review 2006

Well over one million people in less-developed countries were on HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drug therapy, and routine HIV testing was recommended in the U.S. In an unusual case, bird flu spread person to person in Indonesia. A study suggested that most lung cancers could be caught early and cured.

June 5, 2006, marked the 25th anniversary of the first published report of an unknown deadly infectious disease that had sickened five previously healthy young men in Los Angeles. The disease—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—soon grew into a global pandemic, and in the quarter century since that report, HIV had infected 65 million people worldwide and killed 25 million. Nevertheless, stunning progress had been made in understanding, preventing, and treating HIV infections. A study published in November 2006 indicated that a person diagnosed with HIV in the United States could expect to live an average of 24 years with treatment. The pandemic continued to wreak havoc, however, particularly in poor countries. Indeed, the vast majority of the 4.3 million new HIV infections and the 2.9 million AIDS deaths in 2006 were in people living in less-developed countries.

An end-of-the-year report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) painted a detailed picture of the epidemic. The number of people who had been infected with HIV was growing in every region of the world. The most dramatic increases were seen in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the numbers of newly infected people in 2006 were almost 70% higher than in 2004. Of the 37.2 million HIV-infected adults, just under one-half were women. In sub-Saharan Africa, which continued to be the region most devastated by HIV/AIDS (with about 63% of the world’s HIV-infected population), the ratio of infected women to men was 14 to 10.

The UNAIDS/WHO report described “a global revolution in the delivery of complex therapy in resource-limited settings,” although only 24% of people infected with HIV and in need of treatment had access to it. From 2001 through 2005, the number of people on antiretroviral drugs in low- and middle-income countries increased from 240,000 to 1,300,000, and the number of health care sites that provided antiretroviral drugs grew from 500 to more than 5,000. Expanded access to treatment was estimated to have averted 250,000–350,000 AIDS deaths between 2003 and 2005. Universal access to treatment remained an important goal, but many public health leaders warned that treatment without prevention could never be sustained.

Among the most promising prevention technologies on the horizon were microbicides that could be applied inside the vagina or rectum to prevent sexual transmission of HIV. Five products had passed safety tests and were in large-scale clinical trials to evaluate their effectiveness and many others were in earlier-stage trials or under development. Having a prevention method that women could use without a partner’s participation had become a high priority. A keynote speaker at a conference on microbicides in Cape Town in April explained, “Asking women to simply abstain, be faithful, or use condoms is not practical. Nor is it enough—especially when UNAIDS reports that 75% of new infections are acquired from a spouse or regular partner…. Marriage, or being in what a woman thinks is a monogamous, faithful relationship, is sadly one of the biggest HIV risk factors for many young African women.”

Another prevention approach that was being explored was male circumcision. Numerous studies had shown an inverse correlation between rates of male circumcision and rates of HIV infection. In West Africa, where circumcision was common, the prevalence of sexually transmitted HIV infection was low. In southern Africa, where circumcision was not common, the reverse was true. In India uncircumcised men had a sevenfold higher incidence of HIV infection than circumcised men. Biology largely accounted for these differences—the tissue of the internal foreskin contains cells that are specific targets for HIV, and removal of the foreskin substantially lowers men’s susceptibility. A medical trial in South Africa that involved more than 3,000 male volunteers began in 2004 and was stopped in 2005 when it became clear that circumcision reduced sexual transmission of HIV from women to men by 60%. Using data from that trial, an international team of scientists estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa male circumcision could prevent six million new infections and save three million lives over 20 years.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued significantly revised HIV-testing recommendations that took effect in September. Specifically, the health agency recommended HIV testing in the United States for everyone aged 13–64 as a part of routine health care. It also specified that prevention counseling and written consent at the time of a test should no longer be required; surveys suggested that for many people those previous requirements were deterrents to getting tested. CDC officials believed that the new recommendations would, among other goals, reduce the stigma associated with HIV testing and enable people who learned that they were infected to take steps to prevent their infecting others.

Polio

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, begun in 1988 (when about 350,000 people in 125 countries had the crippling viral disease), did not meet its revised goal of ridding the world of polio by the end of 2005. Nonetheless, in October 2005 an advisory committee reaffirmed the feasibility of eradication “in the near future.” In four countries—Nigeria, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—the chain of polio transmission had yet to be entirely broken. Nigeria recorded 1,062 new cases of polio through mid-November 2006, compared with a total of 830 in 2005, and India had 624 new cases through late November 2006, compared with a total of 66 in 2005. An outbreak in western Uttar Pradesh state spread to many previously polio-free areas within India and to four formerly polio-free countries: Bangladesh, Nepal, Angola, and Namibia. Afghanistan had been on the verge of eradication in 2005, when 9 polio cases were recorded; in 2006, the number exceeded 30. Vaccination efforts had been compromised in Afghanistan’s violence-ridden south. At the end of the year, WHO and UNICEF appealed to both government and anti-government forces to agree upon “Days of Tranquility” so that polio vaccinators could safely reach every child.

Malaria

The mosquitoborne tropical disease malaria continued to cause enormous human suffering in many parts of the world. Each year hundreds of millions of people suffered from malaria’s fever, chills, and flulike symptoms, and more than one million died; children in sub-Saharan Africa were by far the most vulnerable. One of the most effective means of controlling malaria was the use of the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in indoor residual spraying (the spraying of the walls and ceilings of houses with the insecticide, which in residual amounts continues to kill mosquitoes that land on the sprayed surfaces up to several months later). Concerns that DDT endangered wildlife, the environment, and human health (concerns that stemmed mainly from the chemical’s once widespread use in agriculture) had led to the banning of DDT in many countries, including the U.S. in 1972. WHO, which had long supported the ban on DDT, reversed its position in 2006 and recommended the use of the chemical as a principal tool in the ongoing war against malaria. WHO had found that DDT presented no health risk when used properly and that in epidemic areas where DDT had been reintroduced, it had reduced malaria transmission by up to 90%. In its 2007 budget the U.S. Agency for International Development allotted $20 million to support indoor spraying with DDT. “DDT specifically has an advantage over other insecticides when long persistence is needed on porous surfaces, such as unpainted mud walls, which are found in many African communities, particularly in rural or semi-urban areas,” the agency pointed out.

Tuberculosis

In the late 1990s cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) that was resistant to the first-line drugs isoniazid and rifampicin emerged in much of the world. Such cases required treatment with second-line drugs, which were more costly, more likely to cause adverse effects, and generally less effective than the first-line medications. By 2006, according to a CDC/WHO survey, 20% of TB isolates from 48 countries were MDR-TB. In March 2006 the CDC published the first comprehensive data on “extensively drug-resistant TB” (XDR-TB)—cases that were resistant to at least two first-line drugs and three or more of the six classes of second-line drugs.

Hospitals in two South African provinces reported more than 70 deaths from XDR-TB between January 2005 and October 2006. The majority of the cases were in persons with AIDS. An infectious disease specialist working at one of the hospitals called the XDR-TB/AIDS problem “a potential time bomb.” Although TB was at an all-time low in the United States, San Francisco, which had the country’s highest rate, was seeing virtually untreatable XDR-TB cases. Some patients who had not responded to any tuberculosis drugs had to undergo surgery to remove part of a lung. A TB expert in the city noted, “It’s really turned back the time to [the] pre-antibiotic era.”

Avian Influenza

By the end of 2006, millions of birds across much of the globe had died or been destroyed as a result of outbreaks of avian influenza (bird flu) caused by the lethal strain of influenza A known as H5N1. Although H5N1 remained mainly a bird virus, the cumulative number of laboratory-confirmed human cases since late 2003, when the virus began spreading across Asia, was 263, about 60% of which had been fatal. (SeeMap.) Each new human case increased concerns that the virus might be gaining the ability to spread among people—a dreaded development with the potential to set off a global pandemic.

Vietnam, the country in which bird flu had taken the greatest human toll through 2005—93 cases, 42 deaths—reported neither human cases nor poultry outbreaks in 2006, which public health officials viewed as evidence that aggressive measures, such as killing infected flocks, inoculating healthy ones, and educating farmers about protecting themselves, had worked. In Indonesia, however, bird flu devastated poultry in 2006 and infected 55 people, of whom 45 died. In May WHO investigators focused on a cluster of cases among members of an extended family on the island of Sumatra. The initial case was a woman who kept chickens at home, and although no viral samples were taken from the chickens or the woman, investigators concluded that she had likely contracted the H5N1 virus from the chickens. Seven additional family members became infected, and only one of them survived. Nevertheless, WHO investigators did not believe this instance of person-to-person infection was cause for excessive alarm, because despite multiple opportunities for the virus to have spread to more family members and to health care workers, it had not.

Researchers in Wisconsin and The Netherlands discovered why the H5N1 virus was not spreading easily among people. They found that unlike seasonal flu viruses, which lodge in the upper respiratory tract and are spread by coughs and sneezes, the H5N1 virus attaches itself to lung cells deep in the respiratory tract, from which viral particles cannot readily be expelled. British scientists studying the H5N1 virus in Vietnam found that once the virus is in the respiratory tract it reproduces rapidly and causes patients to drown in the fluid produced in their own lungs. The scientists also determined that treatment with antiviral drugs within the first 48 hours of infection has the potential to suppress the virus and that drugs given any later are unlikely to prevent a patient’s rapid decline to death.

Foodborne Illness

In the U.S. during September and October, about 200 people scattered over 26 states became ill after eating spinach that was contaminated with the O157:H7 strain of Escherichia coli. One-half of the patients became sick enough to be hospitalized. The typical symptoms—severe bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps—developed within three to four days of eating the contaminated spinach. About 16% of the patients developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure that required treatment with blood transfusions and dialysis. Three people (two elderly women and a two-year-old child) died. The outbreak was controlled through a nationwide ban on spinach and a recall of spinach products grown in three central California counties. Ultimately, field investigators in California found a strain of E. coli in cattle feces that was identical to the bacterium in the tainted spinach, but the precise method of contamination was unknown.

In November and December another E. coli outbreak sickened about 70 persons who had eaten contaminated food at Taco Bell restaurants, mainly in four northeastern states. No fatalities were recorded, but about three-quarters of those who became ill were hospitalized. The O157:H7 strain was again responsible, and the contaminated food—originally thought to have been green onions—was later believed to have been lettuce.

Vaccines

In June the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed the vaccine Gardasil against four types of human papillomavirus (HPV)—6, 11, 16, and 18. The vaccine, developed with the help of research by Australian immunologist Ian Frazer, was expected to have a substantial impact on the health of women worldwide. HPV types 16 and 18 were responsible for 70% of cervical cancers and types 6 and 11 for 90% of sexually transmitted genital warts. Cervical cancer was the second most common cancer in women worldwide, with about 500,000 new cases and more than 200,000 deaths occurring each year. Gardasil was approved for use by girls and women aged 9 to 26. Three injections—ideally given to 11- and 12-year-olds over a period of six months—were recommended. In clinical trials the vaccine was almost 100% effective in preventing precancerous cervical lesions. Another HPV vaccine, Ceravix, was being reviewed for approval in the European Union.

Ian Frazer, the Australian immunologist whose work helped create Gardasil, the first vaccine to …

AP

In May the FDA licensed the first vaccine against shingles, an often-painful nerve-cell infection characterized by a blistering rash. Shingles is caused by reactivation of the herpes zoster virus, which causes chickenpox; anyone who has had chickenpox is at risk for shingles. The vaccine, Zostavax, which was meant for people aged 60 and older, was a stronger version of the pediatric chickenpox vaccine and could lessen the likelihood of an outbreak or reduce the severity of one if it occurred.

Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices

“No American should have to cut pills in half, decide between taking medicine and putting food on the table, or go without medicines altogether,” said Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott about the groundbreaking program his company, the largest retailer in the United States, launched in September. First in Florida and subsequently in all states but North Dakota, the company offered more than 300 generic versions of prescription drugs at a cost of $4 for a month’s supply. Shortly after Wal-Mart launched its program, Target, the sixth largest U.S. retailer, also offered $4 generic drugs at about 1,200 stores in 46 states.

Severely depressed people who had not responded to at least two antidepressant medications benefited from a single low-dose injection of ketamine, a drug that was developed in the early 1960s and first used in the Vietnam War as a battlefield anesthetic. (It had also been used as a recreational drug that produced hallucinations and out-of-body experiences.) Because existing antidepressants took four to eight weeks to relieve depression, researchers had been seeking faster-acting medications. In a study of 18 treatment-resistant patients, depression improved within 24 hours in 12 patients, and 5 patients were nearly symptom-free. In two patients the effects lasted for two weeks. Ketamine acts on different brain receptors from the ones affected by existing antidepressants. Owing to its side effects and abuse potential, however, ketamine was not considered appropriate for the treatment of depression outside controlled research settings; the researchers’ goal was to find substances that affected the same brain pathways and chemicals that ketamine did.

The FDA approved the first insulin delivered by inhalation for people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The product, Exubera, was a fast-acting form of human insulin that could replace the short-acting insulin that many patients injected at mealtimes. Inhaled insulin was not recommended for children, pregnant women, people who had smoked within six months, or people with breathing disorders. Januvia, the first in a new class of drugs for type 2 diabetes (DPP-4 inhibitors), also gained FDA approval. Taken in pill form once a day, Januvia aided the activity of a protein that both stimulated insulin production when blood-sugar levels were elevated and lowered liver glucose production. Based on clinical trials, Januvia was less likely than other oral antidiabetes drugs to cause weight gain or severe drops in blood sugar. Another drug in the class, Galvus, was under FDA review.

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer introduced Exubera, an inhalable form of insulin for treatment of …

Frank Rumpenhorst—dpa /Landov

After a long politically charged debate, the FDA approved the sale in the United States of the morning-after, or next-day, pill (Plan B) to women (and men) aged 18 and older without a prescription. At least 40 other countries already sold such emergency contraceptives over the counter, and Plan B had been available in the U.S. by prescription since 1999. Plan B was a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone and, if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, was about 90% effective in preventing pregnancy.

In November, following an exhaustive review of the safety of silicone-gel breast implants, the FDA lifted a 14-year ban on their use in the United States, and it licensed two companies to manufacture them. The devices had been banned because of allegations that they caused cancer and autoimmune disorders if they leaked or ruptured. The implants would be available to all women for breast reconstruction following breast cancer or trauma and to women 22 years of age and older for breast augmentation. The FDA required the two manufacturers to monitor the safety of the implants by collecting detailed data on their use in 80,000 women.

Cardiovascular Disease

Several reports published or presented at conferences during the year indicated that common treatments for coronary artery disease were being used inappropriately, to the detriment of patients and at enormous cost. For more than a decade, cardiologists had used stents—tiny metal-mesh tubes that were guided into an area of blockage in a coronary artery during a balloon angioplasty procedure—to prop open the vessel and improve blood flow to the heart. Reclosure of the stented artery months after the procedure was a problem, however, in as many as 30% of treated arteries. Drug-eluting stents, which were coated with drugs that inhibited cell growth in the inner artery, were introduced in 2003–04, and by late 2006 they had been used to treat an estimated six million patients worldwide. About 18 months to three years after having received a drug-eluting stent, however, some patients developed blood clots, which increased the risk of heart attack and death. A suspected reason was that drug-eluting stents were being used to treat longer lesions in larger vessels than those for which they had been officially approved. One study suggested that drug-eluting stents were of benefit in only about one-third of patients who received them, and cardiologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, calculated that more than 2,100 patients a year were dying needlessly because they had received drug-eluting stents. It made “little clinical, economic, or common sense,” they concluded, “to forsake a therapy that works well for most patients (bare-metal stents) in favor of a costly new therapy (drug-eluting stents) that has no effect on important clinical outcomes but increases the risk for … a life-threatening complication.”

Drug-eluting coronary stents, such as one shown here, are coated with a drug that inhibits cell …

Photo courtesy of Boston Scientific Corporation, 2007

Opening blocked arteries with angioplasty and stents in people who had experienced a heart attack could be life-saving if it was done within about 12 hours of the attack. In the U.S., however, only about one-third of the one million people who had heart attacks each year received care within that time frame. Nevertheless, many underwent angioplasty (with or without the insertion of stents) days or weeks after the attack, because it was widely assumed that opening an artery might help prevent a future heart attack, heart failure, or death. That long-held belief, however, was shown to be unfounded in a large international study. The study found that angioplasty performed 3 to 28 days after a patient had a heart attack offered none of the assumed benefits and, in fact, was associated with an increased risk of the recurrence of a heart attack.

Cancer

At a breast cancer symposium near the end of the year, U.S. investigators reported that 14,000 fewer breast cancer cases were diagnosed among American women of all ages in 2003 than in 2002—a 7% drop. An even sharper decline of 12% was seen among women aged 50–69 in the type of breast cancer that is dependent on the hormone estrogen for its growth. The researchers believed that the drops in that one-year period could be attributed to the fact that millions of American women stopped taking hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) in 2002 after widely publicized results from a major clinical trial indicated that women who took estrogen and progestin had higher rates of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots than women who took placebos. Prior to the release of those findings, about 30% of postmenopausal American women had been on HRT for such purposes as treating menopausal symptoms and reducing the risk of osteoporosis. By the end of 2002, one-half of the women on HRT had discontinued it. Cancer experts surmised that a substantial number of the women who discontinued HRT might have had tiny tumours that either stopped growing or regressed once they were deprived of supplemental estrogen. Likewise, HRT prescriptions for Canadian women plummeted in late 2002, which presumably explained Canada’s 6% drop in overall breast cancer cases in 2003.

In a large international study, more than 30,000 cigarette smokers were screened every 7 to 18 months with a spiral computed tomography (CT) scan—a procedure in which an imaging machine rotates rapidly around the body and takes more than 100 pictures in sequence. This method detected small lung tumours at a very early stage in more than 400 subjects. (Generally, lung cancers were diagnosed at later stages, when treatment was unlikely to be curative; even with the best treatment, only 15% of patients survived for five years, and ultimately 95% of patients diagnosed with lung cancer died from it.) The researchers estimated that 92% of patients with tumours that were caught very early and surgically removed within one month of diagnosis would survive for 10 years and that 80% of lung-cancer deaths could be prevented through annual CT screening of smokers and others at risk for lung cancer.

Those estimates, however, sparked considerable controversy. The study was criticized for not having had a comparison group of people who were not screened. Critics pointed out that many of the lumps that were detected might never grow or cause problems, and they cautioned that lung-cancer screening through routine CT scans might lead to unnecessary biopsies and surgeries.

Emergency Care

In June the Institute of Medicine (IOM), an arm of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, issued three reports that detailed a crisis in emergency medical care in the United States. The reports described the inability of hospital emergency departments (EDs) to meet the ever-growing demand for their services. Between 1993 and 2003 the number of people seeking care in EDs increased by 26%, whereas the number of EDs declined by 425. Emergency medical services were found to be highly fragmented, poorly coordinated, and ill-equipped to manage the flow of patients, which resulted in some EDs’ remaining empty while others were unmanageably overcrowded. Crowding in the ED affected the whole hospital; often patients were, in effect, boarded in the ED until inpatient beds in the hospital became available. Critically ill patients frequently waited the longest, because intensive-care beds were in shortest supply.

Other key findings were that ambulances were frequently diverted to distant hospitals; in emergencies most children were taken to general hospitals, which often lacked pediatric expertise and equipment; and the American emergency-care system was ill-prepared for a major disaster—be it a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, or a terrorist attack. The IOM recommended strategies to address each of the system’s shortfalls, including the creation of a single agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate and oversee emergency and trauma services.